Winter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of the Cold Month<\/p>\n
Cameras and inks and papers, oh, my!\u00a0 Then, new glasses and seven bags of groceries.\u00a0 We’ve been gone and the larder was bare of important items like milk, turkey slices for the dogs, veggies and fruit, bread and bagels.\u00a0 Now it’s not bare.<\/p>\n
JPII is on a fast-track for sainthood.\u00a0 Just like today.\u00a0 Fast foods and fast saints.\u00a0 Just can’t wait, can we?<\/p>\n
JPII’s successor, the German Shepherd, has taken on major moral issues recently, like, the right name for your kid.\u00a0 No weird ones.\u00a0 He’s also cranked up the heat, already at record highs set by JPII, on theologians teaching at Catholic schools, gays at mass and those pesky liberation theologians.\u00a0 Whoever said the divine right of kings is dead?\u00a0 It lives on in its last bastion, Vatican City.\u00a0 (pic.\u00a0 Yikes!)<\/p>\n
The whole Gifford\/Tucson shooting controversy.\u00a0 We have rule of law and one of those rules is no prior restraint.\u00a0 This means that we cannot stop someone from committing a crime until they’ve actually committed it.\u00a0 This gives us big trouble with at least two categories of persons:\u00a0 pedophiles and psychotics, especially paranoid psychotics.\u00a0 We know the probability of their offending is high, but until they act out there’s nothing we can do.\u00a0 Anyone who has dealt with the seriously mentally ill knows the difficult line walked in their care and treatment, a line between limiting freedoms and giving the individual a realistic chance at living in community.<\/p>\n
Does this mean that the gaseous explosions protected as free speech had no affect on Loughner?\u00a0 I doubt it.\u00a0 Some peoples minds are more porous than others, more open to outside influence.\u00a0 It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which a paranoid psychotic decides that Rush Limbaugh actually knows what he’s talking about, that Sarah Palin is a respectable political figure.\u00a0 O.K.\u00a0 Maybe only a paranoid psychotic would think either of those things, but it only confirms my point.\u00a0 His actions did not exist in a vacuum.\u00a0 Neither did lynchings in the rural south nor do gay hate crimes in many (most?) parts of our country.<\/p>\n
Can we or should we stop Limbaugh, George Beck, Sarah Palin, the tea party gas bags from using inflammatory rhetoric?\u00a0 Regrettably, no.\u00a0 Part of the idea of free speech is that discerning citizens will tell the demagogue from the statesman, the propagandist from a public servant.\u00a0 It does appear that discernment may well be at an all time low in the current US, but it’s not the first time.\u00a0 Those of us with other views must speak, too.\u00a0 And act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of the Cold Month Cameras and inks and papers, oh, my!\u00a0 Then, new glasses and seven bags of groceries.\u00a0 We’ve been gone and the larder was bare of important items like milk, turkey slices for the dogs, veggies and fruit, bread and bagels.\u00a0 Now it’s not bare. JPII is on a fast-track … Continue reading Free Speech and Fast Saints<\/span>